


Obsessive Compulsive

by Jusmine



Category: Being Human (North America)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-13
Updated: 2011-03-13
Packaged: 2017-10-16 22:30:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/170079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jusmine/pseuds/Jusmine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Josh hadn’t always been so OCD.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Obsessive Compulsive

Josh hadn’t always been so OCD. He’d been a messy child, and a teenager whose bedroom floor couldn’t even be seen for all the clothes and books piled on it. He’d been happy enough in that state, and he would never admit it, but he reveled in the mess that had frustrated his frustrating parents so much.

But all that changed the night he faced off against the wolf that changed him.

It was late at night, and he couldn’t sleep. The nightmares haunted him at every turn, and while the drugs they’d given him helped, he hated them. They made everything fuzzy, and he didn’t want fuzzy, he wanted to try to understand what had happened.

He clutched a battered copy of The Fellowship of the Ring in his hands, his knuckles paler than the worn pages. He was staring at his hands as it slowly sank in.

There was dirt, under his fingernails.

The dirt was probably from the forest, where _it_ had happened.

He scrambled up from his bed and tore off his clothes. He examined his entire body for dirt, using the mirror to look at his back and ass. He felt dirty everywhere, fucking _everywhere_ , but it was only under his nails. Fingers and toes.

He ran into Emily’s bathroom, and stole fingernail clippers with one of those metal files on it. He picked under his nails with the file until they bled, some of them, desperate to get rid of The Dirt.

He was satisfied finally, after the blood had trailed down to his wrist.

The relief blew out of him in a long sigh.

Then he looked around his room. Piles of clothes everywhere, what if… what if there was Dirt under them? What if he was _surrounded_?

Josh was scrambling around on the floor before he could think. He shoved all the clothes into the closet, fumbling over the books mixed in. He had to slam his whole weight against the closet door to close it, to _keep it all in_.

He rested against the door briefly, before it all really sank it. He could picture the kitchen. Dirty dishes in the sink, muddy footprints on the floor courtesy of his father’s weekend work boots.

Next he knew, he was throwing dishes out the window and pouring rubbing alcohol over his hands to get rid of any contamination. (Burned like a motherfucker under his nails, but he didn’t notice beyond curiosity.)

The light blinked on, and he froze briefly, but the light only helped him see the dirt that was _everywhere how the hell did it get everywhere like that?!_ And he kept frantically cleaning.

“Josh!” The strangled cry came from Emily, his baby sister, and Josh looked around at her pale, stricken face quickly, but he couldn’t stop moving.

He heard Emily running to the stairs and shouting for their parents.

It was only after his parents came running downstairs and his father grabbed his arms and made him sit in a ( _dirty!_ ) chair that he began to calm down some. Then he realized what this looked like:

A naked madman with blood and rubbing alcohol all over doing housework, and he choked back a sob as he realized that he was going crazy, and all his family could do to help was to make him listen to his father psychoanalyze him.

He ran away three days later, and he didn’t speak to his family until the day he had to take Emily to them.

He kept everything clean, obsessively clean. If he could get away with it, he would vacuum Aidan, because he didn’t know how, but he always had dirt on his shoes. (He vacuumed the floor again instead.)


End file.
